Inertia and I are tight. And I don’t feel bad about it because, trust me, you don’t want to be enemies with a law of physics.

Christmas vacation is like a Guillotine which suddenly and starkly chops off any momentum I have built up in the past year.

Getting going again is like waking when your arms and eyelids are numb. I can’t find the energy to write an essay around these two images.

My mother driving a car while dipping crackers into a . . . Let's put it this way, I keep imagining her saying, “I’m sorry, Officer. I was distracted by a seafood cheese ball.”

My father wiping down every flat surface in the entire kitchen with Pledge – which for all intents and purposes acted like Clark Griswold’s non-caloric silicon-based kitchen lubricant. I slipped oh-so many times, as did everyone else. My father sent condiment bottles across the frictionless granite countertop island. I can imagine the turkey, just removed from the oven, carefully set on the counter, only to fly off as if the bottom of the roasting pan and the counter were magnetically opposed.

Yes, these images give the external force needed to build up my momentum again. Maybe I’ll make it to the grocery store. We're out of my husband's special cereal; he won't touch anything that isn't shellacked with non-nutritive cereal varnish.